𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗦𝗘 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗦 || 𝖭𝗂𝗄𝗈𝗅𝖺𝗂 𝖫𝖺𝗇𝗍𝗌𝗈𝗏

𝘪 - 𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘫𝘦

THE CUFFS AROUND her wrists had turned frigid the longer they walked. The steel wrapped around her wrists the same way her mother's bronze wristbands always had, though these did not look so pretty and felt even worse. The cuffs themselves were attached to a long pole to keep her hands apart, putting her small body in an uncomfortable position. It was difficult to walk with violently shaking legs and arms pulled apart so wide they might as well have been pulled from their sockets. The broken bone in her arm – she was sure it was broken because of the swelling and the rhythmic aching pain that shot through her – did not help the situation either.

The man that had put the cuffs on her had looked apologetic, a purple robe hanging from his slim frame. He had said something, but Freya did not speak Ravkan well at all and only understood certain words like you or no. Her father had begun teaching her only a few months ago, but he would not be able to do that now.

She was being dragged through the dark woods at the border between Fjerda and Ravka, surrounded by those who had always been an enemy of her people. And he was dead, murdered by the fire-wielding demon when he had tried to free her from their grasp. He hadn't known about her curse. Not like Matthias had. The look in her brother's eyes was still enough to burn a hole in her chest. The tone of his voice as he spat the word drusje at her as if he had not known her most of his life was even worse.

She did not realize she was crying until the tears were wiped away by a gentle hand. For Freya, it seemed everything but. She jerked away from it as her breath hitched and her eyes widened. The woman – from Novyi Zem, Freya noticed – pursed her lips but stepped away.

Freya relaxed when she was far enough away from her. The heavy feeling of a foreign drusje robe hung on her shoulders. She had been given it after her father had begun to burn and his screams of agony mixed with her ones of sorrow and terror. A man had knelt beside her then, dressed in a blue robe just like the man that had burned her father. When it was over, he pulled her to her feet slowly and draped the robe over her shoulder.

The weight of it was enough to remind her of Matthias' disgust again. The only comfort she had was that when the demons began pulling her away, he had looked scared. Not of her, but for her. He had shouted her name one last time. And that was the last time she saw him before she pulled away completely and swarmed with the blue-robed demons.

A hand was suddenly placed upon her shoulder and Freya had to fight to not scream or jerk away again. They were all dangerous to her, even if they had acted kindly towards her in the past hour – two? Three? – they had been walking through the woods. Freya looked up at the person – the same Zemini woman as before – and noticed that the soldiers around her were speaking to each other. They had all stopped walking and had taken off their packs.

They were stopping for the night then. Freya had to wonder if it was even going to be night for much longer, with how long they had been walking. With nothing else to focus on suddenly, the ache of the burn on her neck and her frozen bare feet barreled into her. She went willingly when the Zemini woman pulled her gently over to a tree. At its roots, someone had prepared furs and blankets for her to sleep in. She sat down thankfully and quickly pulled the blue robe off of her shoulders. She hated the weight of it, the charred smell of it, the feel of its material. The Zemini woman did not question it, merely took the robe into her hand with a smile and left.